Batsheva and Brother Vellies Launch a Custom Dress Collaboration

It all started when two friends quietly started making dresses together. Batsheva Hay, designer behind the burgeoning label Batsheva, and Aurora James, of CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund–winning, sustainable accessories brand Brother Vellies, were having fun playing around with different fabrics and customizing Hay’s dress designs. Then James wore one of those specially designed frocks to the Met Gala this year—an angelic, sheer white short dress with a ruffled neck, hem, and sleeves—and from there, the pair decided that perhaps they should take their craft project public. Tonight they will celebrate the launch of their Batsheva x Brother Vellies collaboration at James’s new store in Brooklyn. Customers will be able to choose from a few of Hay’s most popular shapes (and James’s favorites) and a selection of limited-edition fabrics to customize their own dress. Fabrics include a cotton printed with money, a shimmery latex, and one with a zebra motif.

Hay’s dresses speak to women who want to take back traditionally girly fashion and embrace the old female-centric sartorial modes by putting their own freethinking spin on it, which is really what drew James to them in the first place. As she explains, “I think the narrative behind her work is really timely, and I appreciate fashion with a social commentary.” She adds, “Further exploration took place for me when I thought about the traditional archetype of a housewife within a black narrative or within an empowered 30-year-old entrepreneur’s narrative—suddenly, a ditsy dress in latex took on a different context.” Hay was enthusiastic about working with James as well, not only because they are friends but because she felt that it helped evolve her outlook as a designer. “I think my styles are typically so singular in their vision,” she says. “It’s my own random fabric finds and intuitive choices about ruffle placement, so it’s actually really reaffirming to have the dresses made through someone else’s filter, especially someone like Aurora who gets it. It breathes new life into them.”

In the beginning James would text Hay to say, “Let’s do sheer iridescent!” or “Let’s do latex,” and as Hay points out, “We got to be spontaneous and scattered, and that is so much fun.” Hay has been doing customization for her clients here and there since she started her label in 2016, but after working with James on this particular project, she sees more work like this in her near future. “It affords you the opportunity to play around,” she says. “Each dress ends up being an experiment, which I love.”